


Tomorrow Will Be Better

by jdjunkie



Category: Saving Hope
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode Tag, F/M, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 09:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3204467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She always got her way with Charlie, except when it really mattered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow Will Be Better

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Season 3, episode 12, Hearts of Glass

Days like this didn’t come along too often.

Dawn raised an ironic glass to that.

Joel had pleaded for his job in a very vulnerable un-Joel-like way. Leila Patterson had died for want of a new heart. Giselle had cried brokenly in her arms and been led gently away into the gaping maw of the foster care system. And, just to top it off, she’d slapped the now-former Dr. Davis in the face in the middle of a heart transplant.

Dawn took another glug of excellent chardonnay -- hell, if you were drowning your sorrows you might as well do it with the good stuff -- and enjoyed the feeling of the alcohol taking her further away from the horrors of the day. This was her second, no, third large glass. She vaguely wondered how many glasses would be needed to obliterate the last ten hours completely.

She drained the last of the wine and caught the bartender’s eye. He brought the bottle over.

“You sure?” he asked. He was early twenties, slim, good-looking. Had the look of a young Charlie about him.

“More sure than I’ve ever been about anything. Fill it up. And leave the bottle.”

The young guy gave her a “you’re the customer” look and did as he was told. It was a smart move. She was not to be messed with tonight. Not tonight. Not ever, actually. She was Dawn Bell, Chief of Surgery, Hope Zion, and she was all business, all the time. Except ...

“Hi.”

She looked up from the contents of her glass and into the mirror over the bar. Of course, he’d know she’d be here. This was where they used to come after work some days, back when they were young medics forging careers, she was Dr. Bell-Harris and they were happy.

The bar was small, friendly and tucked away within easy reach of a couple of hospitals, making it a favorite with off-duty staff. TV screens showing an unrelenting diet of sports lined an entire wall, one reason Charlie always used to suggest this particular watering hole. She looked around. How had she ended up here? She hadn’t set out to come here. She was driving home and then she was making a left and then she was here.

She peered at Charlie in the reflection.

“How’d you know I was here?”

Charlie, all ... Charlie and handsome and not hers anymore, sat on the barstool beside her and asked for a beer.

“I didn’t. But it made sense.”

Dawn snorted as she inhaled more wine. “Nothing makes sense, Charlie.” She turned in her seat and looked him in the eye. “I wonder if it ever did.”

He pursed his lips and nodded in that way he had. The way that said they’d been here before, had all the arguments and yet here they were ... side by side on barstools, still helping each other deal with the same shit, different day stuff.

Charlie took a drink of beer, put the bottle down and started picking at the label. He often did that for no discernible reason. It used to drive her nuts. Now, it was a familiar gesture. Comforting. She wanted to cry.

“Rough day,” he said, looking at the bottle, frowning.

“I’ve had better.”

“And worse.”

“Oh, yeah. The one where you came home, packed a bag and told me you were fucking Alex was a good one. Bad one. Whatever.”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “I meant professionally.”

“Oh, well. Professionally ... yeah, some worse, as in days I’ve lost more patients or the outcomes were not as expected or desired. None, however, where I’ve felt I’ve let so many people down.”

And, crap, those tears were never meant to spill, and certainly not in front of Charlie. She scrubbed at her face angrily. She’d shed too many tears in front of him. She pulled a face and fought them back.

“You did your job, Dawn. You did _more_ than your job. The girl isn’t your responsibility.”

Dawn blinked and made a show of tilting her head and shoving her face close to Charlie’s.

“Now, that’s the Charlie I fell in love with. Matter-of-fact. Hard. Callous, some might say. I’ve missed him. That coma turned you into a wuss.” She leaned back. Point made. Another glug of wine helped dull the feeling that she was lashing out at entirely the wrong person. Deja vu.

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. He looked dangerous sometimes. Lots going on beneath that calm, oh so controlled exterior. She’d seen glimpses of it back when they were a couple. It used to turn her on. She hated that it still did.

“You had to follow protocol with the allocation of the donor heart. You had no choice. Just as you had no choice with the girl going back into foster care. Don’t beat yourself up about things over which you have no control.” He was so sincere, so ... present. All she had to do was lean in and she could kiss him. He wouldn’t pull away or judge her. In a strange way, that hurt her most of all; she could still have him, even though he would never be hers again.

“Well, I’m sure the fact that I followed procedure like a good little girl is a great comfort to the late Leila and her devastated foster daughter.” The wine was starting to taste bitter, its warmth more akin to a consuming fire. She didn’t want to drink anymore but she deserved the bitterness. She drank some more.

She felt wetness on her face and angrily brushed the tear away. Looking up, she studied herself in the mirror. She didn’t much like what she saw.

“What’s become of us, Charlie?”

He picked at the label again, a tiny pile of tiny bits of damp paper building up next to the heavily condensed bottle. He didn’t answer.

Anger mounting and seeking an outlet, she let the words come. “I’ve worked for this, for the position, the successful career, all my adult life. When we were first married, climbing the ladder was all that mattered to both of us. And, by the way, when you landed the chief of surgery job, I was as pissed as I was happy because you beat me to it. Well, hey, look at me now -- top job, broken marriage, no children and a reputation for being the hardest ass in a profession populated by the very hardest of asses. And you ... demoted, no longer with the love of your life – and don’t worry, I don’t mean me -- and caught up in a baby daddy mystery that is the subject of a Hope Zee betting pool. Go us, Charlie. We really are the by-word in life successes.”

Dawn raised a glass in mock salute and her elbow slipped as she placed it on the bar. Wine spilled onto the counter and cascaded onto her dress.

“Okay. That’s enough.” Charlie tried to take the glass from her hand.

She snatched it away, angrily, spilling more. “You don’t get to tell me when I’ve had enough. You don’t get to tell me anything. You lost that right when you fucked Alex while I was trying to give you a fucking baby.” She knew she was shouting but couldn’t stop. It was all a mess, such a mess, and Dawn Bell didn’t do mess. She did control and restraint and barbed quips that covered up everything.

Charlie took her arm in a firm grip. “Dawn.”

“What? Don’t want these nice people to know what kind of a man you really are?” She shook his hand off and immediately mourned the loss of the warm fingers around her arm. She’d always loved his hands; surgeon’s hands; lover’s hands.

Charlie took hold of her again and leaned close, hissing, “I don’t give a damn what they think of me, but you are chief of surgery at one of this city’s top hospitals and it’s quite possible that someone in here recognizes you. People have phones that take pictures. The last thing you need right now is for an image of you lashing out or falling off a barstool appearing in the news. Now, I’m going to let go of your arm and you are going to get off the chair, pick up your coat and purse and I’m going to take you home.”

She lived in a beautiful apartment with amazing views in a fantastic city but it wasn’t a home. She lived alone. She didn’t even have a guinea pig.

And worse than that, Giselle wasn’t going home tonight. She’d never go home with Leila again.

Dawn took a deep breath. She smoothed down her dress, picked up a napkin and blotted the worst of the wine from the cotton. It was ruined. It didn’t matter.

“I don’t want to go home, not tonight” she said, quietly. “Take me back to the hospital. I’ll sleep there. I have spare clothes and a couch in my office. I’ll be fine in the morning. I have no surgeries scheduled and if anything crops up unexpectedly Reid can take my place.” She gave Charlie a pointed look. “It’s happened before.”

Charlie’s eyes were as cold as blue ice. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t want to be seen like this at the hospital.” He picked up her jacket from the stool next to Dawn’s and placed at around her shoulders. Dawn smiled to herself. He was pissed at her but he was still looking out for her. So Charlie. So them.

“I don’t want to be seen like this anywhere, Charlie. If you won’t take me, I’ll call a cab.”

He sighed, but she knew that sigh. She’d won. She always got her way with Charlie, except when it really mattered.

“Okay. Okay. Can we just leave?” He threw a twenty on the bar and nodded to the bartender.

“He looks like you,” Dawn said, as she picked up her purse, raking her hair into a semblance of shape. Dignity at all times.

“He does not.”

“When you were young. And handsome. And mine.”

“I’ve never been young, or handsome.”

She stood, a little unsteadily on her feet, and fixed him with a look. “But you _were_ mine.”

He gave her a long-suffering look that was so infused with exasperated affection and so Charlie it cracked something open deep inside her.

“It felt so good,” she blurted, unaware of what she was saying until she’d said it. “Holding her in my arms.”

Charlie frowned.

“Giselle. It felt good to be able to comfort her. It felt like ...”

There was so much sadness in his eyes. He knew. He loved her enough not to say anything.

“Come on. It’s late.”

He ushered outside where the cool, evening breeze felt good on her skin.

“Tomorrow will be better, right?” She’d told her study group it would and she had to believe it.

“Sure.”

“Promise?”

Blue eyes softened as they met hers.

“No.”

“Well, okay.”

She shivered as he put an arm gently around her shoulders and they walked towards his car.

 

ends


End file.
